Comment by ericabiz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericabiz | Hacker News Reader

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> But the biggest is that the people are truly interested in intellectual matters in a way that was not extant in the other places I've lived.

That seems like it used to be true more than it is now. I live in Austin, and you can't go to a downtown coffee shop without hearing a spirited discussion about programming languages, frameworks or even conversion rates (I heard that last one standing in line at a taco place the other day.)

It's partially, I think, because programming and computers are more ingrained in the culture at large, and mostly because SF got too expensive and so places like Austin, Seattle, and Portland have a significant number of tech startups now.

The conversations are on a different level though. In a secondary tech market you'll hear CoffeeScript vs. JavaScript, Laravel vs Rails or whatever. In the Bay Area, and also in Cambridge, the discussion might be about compiler architecture or reverse engineering.

That's some serious next level snobbery. Let me guess where you live.

In neither of those places. It's something I've observed living and working in both, however, and it's one of the main things I miss.

I would place those three or four conversations on the same level, to be frank. Also, living somewhere that isn't a tech capital, I'm actually annoyed to hear programming language discussion on the bus in the city, but maybe that's because I'm trying to get home from my job, not stay at my desk.

You're absolutely right. A better example of the former would be somebody building a basic CRUD app but describing it in brutal detail, throwing around as many words that buzz to the speaker as possible (REST, API, Bootstrap, etc.). Of course there's nothing wrong with that but it's boring as hell to overhear. A better description would be that in primary tech markets, the conversations tend to go much deeper and into areas that others would consider esoteric.

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